‘With over 17,000 individual pieces of leather and 1,000 handmade tiles, St James’s latest piece of public art honours the artisan and instils the profound joy in making. The first of three artists creating site-specific works for the new St James’s Market, we met David Thorpe to talk mud, medieval tiling and our modern-day relationship with objects.’ – The Correspondent
St James’s Market is the latest project to come forward as part of The Crown Estate’s wider strategic vision for the St James’s portfolio. This includes a £500m investment over ten years in improving the properties within the portfolio to secure the area’s reputation as a world renowned destination for future generations.
Futurecity have devised the cultural strategy for St James’s Market, curated the artwork commissions and will manage the ongoing delivery of the installations as the redevelopment progresses.
As part of this cultural strategy, artworks have been commissioned with the aim of creating vibrant, distinctive areas around St James’s Market that draw on the area’s historic reputation for master craftsmanship, contemporary art and luxury retail for inspiration.
“St James’s has a rich cultural heritage, focused around high quality craftsmanship and this is something we want to put right at the heart of our vision for reinvigorating St James’s Market.” – Anthea Harries, St James’s Portfolio Manager
Marking the artist’s first permanent public art installation, David Thorpe has designed an embedded artwork for the Regent Street St James’s block of the redevelopment, which is currently in fabrication. Thorpe’s work has always been concerned with the relationship between objects and their makers, and the role of craft and labour in handmade and design art. The commission at St James’s is made up of two parts: three exterior panels of encaustic ceramic tiles on the outside of Regent Street Block, and two interior panels made with intricate cut leather and a light box in the lift lobby.
‘There was quite a lot of tiling around St James’s and Jermyn Street, but I didn’t want to make pieces that were alien to me, so the tiles had to be handmade, where each one is slightly different. They are based on this book designer called T. J. Cobden-Sanderson – he was an Arts and Crafts guy and he made one-off book covers and gave them as gifts to loved-ones. The outside panels go around a corner, almost like a book cover or jacket, and the interiors are like the inlay papers.’ – David Thorpe
dn&co produce St James’s quarterly newspaper, The Correspondent. In the latest issue, readers can learn more about this artwork and its progress; their article ‘A Labour of Love’ includes an interview with David Thorpe and photography by Polly Braden, giving a unique insight into the concept behind the commission and the laborious fabrication process it entails.
‘It comes through John Ruskin and the idea of the loved object – a labour of love. For Ruskin, there’s a love exchange between the maker and the object. And that the value of the object is really the embedded labour within it.’
‘We’re often alienated from our objects. We really don’t know who made them, the steps behind them, the line from human-to-human-to-human-to-human. But when you’re art making you increasingly care about the labour that’s gone into a piece.’ – David Thorpe
You can read the full article ‘A Labour of Love’ in St James’s Correspondent, Autumn 2015, Issue 10,
We are delighted to be working with David on this beautiful commission and look forward to seeing its completion.
Photography © Polly Braden